Once human: stories

Once Human: Stories
by Steve Tomasula

Quality Paper
2013
Price: $19.95

E Book
2013
Price: $19.95

A stunning new collection of stories by a master fictionist, Once Human shows the ways to go beyond standard maps of simple understanding.

A manga artist who is afraid that she herself is slipping into a cartoon version of life, a lab technician who makes art with the cloning technology she uses at work, a sociologist hunting for the gene that makes some people want to take risks—these are some of the characters that populate the stories in Once Human. Exploring the spaces where life is shaped by science and the technologies we bring into being, Steve Tomasula’s characters often find that the harder they look at the world, the less they can say. The map that emerges from these stories charts the territory of human longing and the failure of poetry, science, and technology to explain the “why” of the world, if not its “how.”

IndiFab Best Book of the Year (Short Fiction) Nominee.

…. a valuable sampling of the work of a compelling and genuinely experimental writer. –Daniel Green, The Kenyon Review

...Tomasula creates a new postmodern, post-human realism that richly traces our infinite potential of self-production, with just enough human left to give it a beating heart. –Quarterly West

…. In Once Human, Tomasula impresses not only with his literary skills but also with the range of his knowledge. –The Collagist

To see "The Color of Flesh" and browse other sample stories, “Look Inside” the book.

Fiction Collective Two is an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of artistically adventurous, non-traditional fiction. FC2 is supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Alabama Press, and private contributors.